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Improve Healthcare Management via Electronic Health Record System

A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Digital Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2023) | Viewed by 5524

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
1. Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
2. HUS Diagnostic Center, HUSLAB, Helsinki University Hospital, 5, 00250 Helsinki, Finland
Interests: public health care science; environmental and occupational health

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are a key aspect of modern healthcare. They can make patients’ data available for different parties within the treatment chain almost in real time and thus improve the continuation of care. EHRs can also improve patients’ safety if various safety checks are included in the EHR system. In sophisticated EHR systems, it is possible to supervise the quality of care. Structural recordings in EHRs will help to gather data regarding patients and treatment results, thus enabling the data-driven management of healthcare units. This has the potential to improve both the efficacy and effectiveness of the treatment. However, EHR systems also have their caveats. The systems are often complex and expensive. The optimal use of EHRs requires the extensive education of the staff. Furthermore, a dependency on EHRs will cause new types of safety issues, because their availability has to be over 99.9% in practice, and any unplanned disruptions will cause major risks in terms of patient safety. The opportunity for multiple actors to access the EHR system creates also issues regarding the confidentiality of data and the privacy of patients, and sometimes, quite complex solutions are needed to secure patients’ rights to privacy. However, EHRs are here to stay. It is likely that in the future, artificial intelligence (AI) will be a part of EHR systems, helping professionals to select those at-risk patients for appropriate treatment and guide others to enable better outcomes.

Prof. Dr. Lasse Lehtonen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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Keywords

  • Electronic Health Records (EHRs)
  • continuation of care
  • patients’ safety
  • data-driven management
  • effectiveness of the treatment
  • privacy

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

14 pages, 658 KiB  
Review
Closed-Loop Medication Management with an Electronic Health Record System in U.S. and Finnish Hospitals
by Susan B. Shermock, Kenneth M. Shermock and Lotta L. Schepel
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20(17), 6680; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20176680 - 30 Aug 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 5194
Abstract
Many medication errors in the hospital setting are due to manual, error-prone processes in the medication management system. Closed-loop Electronic Medication Management Systems (EMMSs) use technology to prevent medication errors by replacing manual steps with automated, electronic ones. As Finnish Helsinki University Hospital [...] Read more.
Many medication errors in the hospital setting are due to manual, error-prone processes in the medication management system. Closed-loop Electronic Medication Management Systems (EMMSs) use technology to prevent medication errors by replacing manual steps with automated, electronic ones. As Finnish Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) establishes its first closed-loop EMMS with the new Epic-based Electronic Health Record system (APOTTI), it is helpful to consider the history of a more mature system: that of the United States. The U.S. approach evolved over time under unique policy, economic, and legal circumstances. Closed-loop EMMSs have arrived in many U.S. hospital locations, with myriad market-by-market manifestations typical of the U.S. healthcare system. This review describes and compares U.S. and Finnish hospitals’ EMMS approaches and their impact on medication workflows and safety. Specifically, commonalities and nuanced differences in closed-loop EMMSs are explored from the perspectives of the care/nursing unit and hospital pharmacy operations perspectives. As the technologies are now fully implemented and destined for evolution in both countries, perhaps closed-loop EMMSs can be a topic of continued collaboration between the two countries. This review can also be used for benchmarking in other countries developing closed-loop EMMSs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Improve Healthcare Management via Electronic Health Record System)
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